Studies On Intellectual Property
The connection between intellectual property and innovation is a lot weaker than I think most people presume. Most of the evidence indicates it works best in pharmaceuticals, and I am increasingly of the opinion that healthcare is essentially just "different".
A dump of studies and findings.
If we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one. But since we have had a patent system for a long time, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge, to recommend abolishing it.
Almost fifty years later, the first half of this illustrious sentence is more valid than it has ever been. Sadly, the recommendation has not been followed: far from maintaining the status quo, the patent system has been enormously extended, and there is no sign of the end of the expansion of intellectual monopoly to every corner of our economic system. Moreover, the fifty years since have turned up no evidence that patents serve to increase innovation. It is time to reconsider the second recommendation
Patent systems are often justified by an assumption that innovation will be spurred by the prospect of patent protection, leading to the accrual of greater societal benefits than would be possible under non-patent systems. However, little empirical evidence exists to support this assumption.
Because they provide exclusive property rights, patents are generally considered to be an effective way to promote intellectual discovery... We found that our “markets system” performed better than the patent system.
In any case, the empirical economic evidence strongly rejects simplistic arguments that patents universally spur innovation and economic growth. The direct comparison of estimated net incentives suggests that for public firms in most industries today, patents may actually discourage investment in innovation
This paper introduces a new internationally comparable data set that permits an empirical investigation of the effects of patent law on innovation. The data have been constructed from the catalogues of two 19th century world fairs: the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, 1851, and the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876. They include innovations that were not patented, as well as those that were, and innovations from countries both with and without patent laws. I find no evidence that patent laws increased levels of innovative activity but strong evidence that patent systems influenced the distribution of innovative activity across industries. Inventors in countries without patent laws concentrated in industries where secrecy was effective relative to patents, e.g., food processing and scientific instruments. These results suggest that introducing strong and effective patent laws in countries without patents may have stronger effects on changing the direction of innovative activity than on raising the number of innovations
For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, since the path-breaking work of Nordhaus [1969], we merge established theory of IP protection with available data on the value of innovations to quantify the socially optimal term of IP protection, and its relation with market size... We draw information from a wide variety of independent empirical sources, both time-series and cross section, to calibrate the model, and always reach the same set of policy conclusions:
...On the basis of the available evidence, our best estimate of the length of optimal copyright term is about two years, and that of patents is about ten years
I am yet to adequately read it, but from my initial glance the book Who Owns This Sentence makes a good case that copyright has been extended well and truly passed the point of benefit.